


caught between the tides

by waveydnp



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, no violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-28 15:38:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18759358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waveydnp/pseuds/waveydnp
Summary: dan is alone in a post apocalyptic world, following the coast of the sea and heading north, avoiding what’s left of humanity at all costsuntil, desperate and losing hope, he stumbles across a cabin in the woods that isn’t quite as uninhabited as it first appears





	caught between the tides

**Author's Note:**

> happy birthday mandy <3

Dan always said he wanted to be alone. He joked a million times about craving death, seized every opportunity he could to shut himself away from the rest of humanity.

He can’t remember why. There are a lot of things he can’t remember from that part of his life.

His feet are wet. His feet are always wet. At least, that’s how it feels.

When he finds a house that hasn’t been too badly looted and is clearly empty of squatters, he can peel off his wet socks and hang them up. Once in a while he even stays long enough for his shoes to dry, and once in a blue moon he finds a new pair that actually fit his feet and haven’t been soggy for weeks on end. They usually smell like someone else’s feet, but he’s not picky.

Aesthetic isn’t something that crosses his mind anymore. If it’s warm and it fits, it’s good enough for him. If it’s waterproof he might even look up to the sky and and thank the clouds for blessing him. He doesn’t actually believe there’s anything up there, but sometimes he needs somewhere to put his gratitude.

It rains a lot in this part of the world. He’s not even sure where he is anymore, but his best guess is Liverpool, or maybe Blackpool. Somewhere north, somewhere by the sea. If he’d been smart he would have headed the other way, or just stayed where he was. Surely London would have been better stocked than wherever the hell he is now.

He’s trying not to beat himself up over it. He hadn’t been in his right mind. He probably still isn’t.

He keeps walking, keeps following the ocean’s coast because he doesn’t know what else to do. It makes him feel a little less purposeless. He can pretend he’s alone because he wants to be, that he’s on some sort of quest to find himself.

He _is_ on a quest. He’s just not sure what the end of it will look like. He tries not to let his mind linger on the obvious truth that there may never actually be an end.

He redirects his thoughts, focuses instead on the immediacy of his situation, running through what he’s got and what he needs and only what the next few hours will look like.

He’s on a beach with rocky sand. He’s chilled from head to toe as every single item of clothing on his body is damp from the mist of the waves crashing against the shoreline. The sound of them is loud, but it’s nice. It helps drown out the thoughts that would allow him to spiral.

His back is sore. The backpack he’s got on it is fairly heavy, but that’s really only a good thing. It’s weighed down with various supplies he’s managed to pilfer, none of which he’s even remotely willing to part with. If anything he wishes the bag was heavier. He’ll take a stiff back over an empty stomach any day.

He’s got tins of beans and peaches and a spoon, a toothbrush and a half full tube of toothpaste, a thin wool blanket and a change of socks and pants. There’s a knife wrapped up in the ultimate luxury of toilet roll and safely tucked away in a separate pocket, and a lighter that he’s fairly sure is on its last legs now. He’s got a couple of small water bottles left and two chocolate chip protein bars that taste like sawdust but keep him feeling full for hours after he’s eaten one.

All told, he’s still fairly well stocked. He knows that, and he’s spent enough time with far less to be grateful for his current bounty.

But he’s cold. He’s cold and his feet are wet and he’s fantasizing about sleeping somewhere warm as grey clouds roll over his head and the waves beat against the rocks and spray him with their salt.

He licks his lips and pretends it tastes that way because he’s just eaten a packet of crisps. Out of all the things he misses, food that tastes nice is definitely near the top of the list. The peaches are nice, but the beans taste like mush and metal and sometimes they make his stomach hurt if he doesn’t drink enough water with them.

Not for the first time he looks out at the Atlantic and wishes he’d taken the time to learn to fish. Or hunt. Or forage. Or properly build a shelter. Or start a fire that didn’t billow smoke in his face as he tried to enjoy its warmth. When the lighter stops working he’ll be utterly screwed unless he can find another one. Right now smoky fires are a fucking blessing.

But life isn’t like the video games he used to play. There are no tutorials, no cheat codes, no restart buttons. He’s scraping by so far, but things aren’t really getting easier as he goes. He hasn’t learned how to provide for himself. All he’s learned is how to endure the strain of a rucksack loaded down with things he’s knicked from other people’s houses. It’s working well so far but eventually the houses will all be empty. Eventually the tins of food will run out or go bad and the bristles in his toothbrush will fall out and he’ll have nothing but sticks to rub together to make fire.

There’s no safety net. There are no instructions, no one to guide him in the right direction or teach him the skills crucial to surviving in a world that no longer wants him to survive. It’s just him and the sea and his wet fucking socks.

And the setting sun. The beauty of it isn’t as moving as it used to be, when all it really means now is that soon it’ll be cold and dark. He needs to find shelter immediately or he’ll be sleeping out in the open.

He needs to find a torch. That’s at the top of his wish list right now. That and a softer surface to sleep on. Sand doesn’t have as much give when it’s wet.

He could leave the beach, walk up into the forest. The trees would provide more shelter and in theory he could probably throw together a little hideout with sticks and leaves. He reckons it would be the smart thing to do.

But somehow he hasn’t learned to let go of childhood fears. Trees in the dark still have a haunting quality, and the openness of the ocean makes him feel just that little bit less trapped. The sound of the water makes him feel just that little bit less alone.

Of course there isn’t always coastline that’s walkable. Sometimes he has no choice but to travel through forest, but right now he’s got beach. As long as it doesn’t rain too hard, his scratchy wool blanket will be enough to keep him from freezing to death.

He’s heard that’s a rather peaceful way to go, certainly better than starvation or infection or some kind of violence.

That’s another reason he likes to stay as close to the edge of the sea as he can. Humanity is the most frightening thing of all, especially in the face of annihilation. There are less of them now but desperation has a habit of turning people wild, reverting them back to their baser instincts of kill or be killed, and Dan can’t stomach that. Surely there are others like him out there, pacifists who’d be willing to share in whatever bounty they could collect together, but he’s been witness to enough horror that seeking out companionship isn’t worth the risk.

Most of the others stay in the towns where supplies aren’t so scarce. No one bothers him here.

He stops walking when he sees a cluster of jagged boulders and decides that’ll do for shelter. He manages to find a little pocket of space in between them, just big enough for him and his stuff and a small fire to keep him warm. He dumps his bag and heads for the more forested area before he has too much time to think about how much it scares him. He can’t make fire without something to burn.

It’s already getting dark. He really should have stopped earlier, but somehow he’s _still_ a slave to his self destructive tendency to procrastinate. He gathers up as many loose twigs and branches as he can hold in his arms and carries them back to his sad excuse for a camp, then goes out and does two more trips. On the last one he actually ventures out a little deeper to find a few proper thick logs because the only thing scarier than trees and a darkening sky is the prospect of sleeping in complete and total darkness because he’d been too lazy to collect anything more than kindling.

He manages to get a small fire built before the sun goes down completely, but just barely. His socks are still wet and his toes are so cold that he’s starting to lose feeling, so he pulls off his trainers and peels off his socks and arranges them around his fire in hopes that they’ll dry a little by the time he has to put them back on again. He gets his feet as close as he can to the burning logs without actually singeing his flesh and shudders at the warm relief that ripples up his legs.

When he can wiggle his toes again, he digs his spare pair of socks out of his backpack and pulls them on. They smell horrendous and there are holes in both heels but they’re dry, which at this point is basically the height of luxury.

That and the tin of peaches he has to open by smashing it against a jagged bit of rock. It’s a pain in the ass but definitely worth it. He manages not to slice his finger open this time, and the peaches are so sweet they make his brain sing with endorphins. There’s enough juice that he doesn’t even need to dip into a water bottle and his stomach feels genuinely full by the time the tin is empty.

He could have eaten one of the protein bars and it would have been a lot less effort, but he wants to save those for breakfast. If he can stay disciplined and not wolf them down in one go he reckons they could last him four or five more days.

He can’t always stay disciplined. More times than he cares to admit he’s lost himself in a fit of hunger and eaten his entire rations in one sitting, but the pain of the hunger pangs and the fear of not knowing where he’ll find his next meal helps ensure that that doesn’t happen very often anymore.

He sets the tin out in the open to catch any rain that might happen to fall in the night and adds some more twigs to his fire. It’s smoky as always because the wood near the edge of the beach is perpetually damp, but at least it keeps the bugs away. He’s been on his quest long enough that old luxuries are forgotten and the ones he has now are deeply, deeply appreciated.

He appreciates the sound of the waves and the warmth of his fire and the taste of peaches lingering on his tongue. He appreciates that he has a blanket to keep the worst of the night’s chill out of his bones, and that when he reaches deep down into his bag his fingers close around a small, tattered notebook and a pen with purple ink.

Somehow it’s the least practical luxury that he appreciates the most. He smooths his hand over the front cover and then opens it to the first page, the one dedicated to pragmatism. He adds ‘tin opener’ to the long list of things he needs to try to find and then flips forward to find where he’d left off last time.

If the world is resettled someday, if civilization begins again and someone happens upon this thing, they’d likely conclude his words to be the ramblings of a mad man. There’s no cohesion or organization whatsoever, he just writes down whatever’s in his head. Sometimes it’s lists of things he misses. Sometimes it’s memories he wants to keep from a time when life wasn’t a fight to survive. Sometimes it’s a detailed menu of what he’d eat if he could have whatever he wanted.

Sometimes it’s dreams. Sometimes it’s badly written poetry, or what could generously be given that label. Usually these are the pages that take his pain, dark thoughts he wants to purge from his brain lest they start to eat away at his resolve to keep fighting. There are no drugs or therapists or scented candles anymore, he has to take his self care any way he can get it.

Tonight he writes about him mum. He’s been missing her a little extra lately. It’s like the harder things get the more desperately he wishes she were here to take care of him. He writes about the time she made herself sick riding a rollercoaster with Dan just so he wouldn’t have to ride it alone. He writes about how she used to curse like a sailor when the traffic was bad.

He recounts with that purple ink one very specific memory, peculiarly vivid for how young he was. He’d woken up crying from a nightmare, shouting for her in the dark of his bedroom. She’d come running, the worry on her face still burned so clearly in his mind. She’d knelt on the ground and wiped his tears away and stroked his temple as she sang him back to sleep.

He can’t remember what song she sang. He hates that he can’t remember the song.

He can barely see the page for the dim light of the fire and the blurring of his eyes with tears he can’t keep from falling. His writing is likely completely illegible, but that’s fine. He just needs to get it out.

When his hand is cramping and his head is starting to throb he closes the notepad and fits it and the pen back into his backpack carefully. He wipes the wet tracks off his cheeks and gathers up as much sand and pebbles as he can to build a little wall around the fire. He likes to sleep right beside it, so he needs to make sure it stays contained. He adds another of the big logs and waits until it’s roaring to lay down and curl up.

He’s still cold. The cold is a constant, but it could be a lot worse and he’d been walking steadily all day long. He’s tired. He listens to the wood crackle as he slowly drifts off, watching the flicker of the flames and trying to remember what his mum’s voice sounded like.

-

He wakes every couple hours to stoke the fire and add more branches, and to check that no animals have made off with his food. Despite knowing that bears don’t even live on this part of the earth, he’s always afraid he’ll wake up to one snuffling his face before gutting him.

He gets up for good when the first rays of light touch the sky. Without the comforts he used to take for granted, sleeping past dawn is basically an impossibility. Birds are chirping and his back is sore and he’s damp as ever. He’s run out of wood for his dwindling fire and the chill has properly worked its way under his skin. His options are to fetch more logs and try to warm himself over the coals, or just to pack up and keep moving, raising his body temperature with good old fashioned exercise.

He decides to move on. He’s not hungry enough to justify dipping into his rations yet and his fingers are too stiff to write, so there’s no reason to stay. He has enough food for now but he’s keenly aware that it won’t last forever and he needs to keep moving towards his next haul.

Hopefully that will come before things start to get desperate. He doesn’t really have any cushion left on his body to sustain him through days when all he can find to eat are bugs and leaves.

Those kind of thoughts won’t do to dwell on right now, though. Panic is dangerous. Hopelessness is dangerous. It’s only so easy for him to spiral into wondering why he’s even bothering to carry on.

He’s not going to let himself do that. He’s alright. As alright as could be expected, anyway.

He shucks the blanket off reluctantly and rolls it up as tight as he can get it, fitting it in his pack and pulling out the wet socks. He switches out the dry ones for the ones that are already wet; no sense in getting both pairs wet.

He's thirsty but he can wait. Water is probably the most precious of all his resources and he hasn’t found a better alternative than collecting rainwater and looting bottles of the stuff from houses and shops. It’s slightly maddening that he’s constantly surrounded by a whole ocean of water that he can’t drink. He tried once, when he was desperate enough to hope that somehow it would work out.

It didn’t. He’ll not make that mistake again.

Luckily it rains more than it doesn’t in this bloody country, so the likelihood of getting seriously dehydrated is extremely unlikely. Still, he prefers to be conservative with his good bottled water.

He does use a couple drops of it on his toothbrush, though. He reckons keeping his teeth from rotting out of his skull is actually rather important. It had been a very happy day when he happened upon a pharmacy that still had a few supplies. All the soap and shampoo and most of the drugs were already gone, but they had a surprising selection of oral hygiene products available for the taking. Apparently not everyone considered them as important as Dan.

He’d kill for some shampoo. He reaches up to touch his hair and cringes. It’s dirty and matted and long enough now that it falls into his eyes constantly. Some days he swears he’s going to saw it off with his knife but he’s yet to actually follow through on those frustrations. Obviously some vestiges of his former vanity still remain. He’s just glad he doesn’t have any reflective surfaces to betray how grizzly he looks at the moment.

He brushes vigorously until his mouth is full of foam and he can taste blood under the burn of mint. He spits it out right onto the sand and returns the brush and the paste to his pack, his mouth pleasantly tingly as he begins the day’s journey.

-

He doesn’t know how long it’s been. The first few months are a blur, like his brain had decided the details would be too painful to commit to memory. Time has no real meaning anymore beyond the rising and setting of the sun. He doesn’t even remember what season it was when things started going to shit.

He can gather from the fact that he’s cold pretty much all the time now that summer is turning to autumn, but that’s another thing he’s trying not to dwell on. He has absolutely no idea how he’s going to survive the long months of winter, but sleeping on the beach probably won’t be a viable option for much longer.

As it happens, the beach is giving way to rocks that are too big and slippery for Dan to traverse anyway, and he’s steadily being forced up towards the dreaded woods. He takes one last look out at the sea and hopes he’ll see it again sooner than later.

It’s quieter among the trees, like their branches absorb the sound of the waves, but to Dan it feels more sinister than peaceful. He can imagine danger lurking behind every trunk and bush, just biding its time for the opportune moment to strike. Twigs snap underneath his feet as he walks. He’s glad at least that if something attacks him he’s likely to hear it coming.

Progress is a lot slower in the woods. He can’t walk a straight path and he can’t even be sure he isn’t walking himself so deep into it that he’ll never walk out again. Or maybe he’s walking in circles. He doesn’t have a compass and he can’t see the stars, so he’s really got no fucking clue.

But at least he’s surrounded by firewood and the means to make some kind of shelter. He’ll probably be a lot warmer when he goes to sleep tonight - if he _can_ sleep, that is.

He digs through his pack around what he assumes to be midday and pulls out a water bottle and one of the protein bars. By now he’s starving and regretting his decision not to eat anything earlier, because he can’t physically stop himself from eating the whole bar and downing three quarters of the bottle in one go.

“Fuck,” he mutters to himself, shoving the water back into his bag before he can do something daft like finish it off entirely.

He’s such a shit survivalist.

-

He makes it through the night - barely. He doesn’t sleep but his fire roars all night long and it keeps him warmer than he’s been in ages. He actually manages to dry his wet socks and cook his tin of beans so at least they’re warm mush instead of cold, which is a marked improvement. He finishes the rest of his water bottle and pulls out his notepad to lose himself in writing before he can panic about the fact that he’s only got one bottle left.

The trees take on a sinister quality in the dark that he just can’t convince himself not to be afraid of, so he tends to his fire with a perfectionist's level of concentration and writes. Tonight it’s song lyrics. He sings them out loud as he jots down the ones he can remember, Frank Ocean and Kanye and FKA Twigs and, weirdly enough, Muse, despite the fact that he’d grown out of them a long time ago.

It’s a well effective distraction - for a while. Music is another thing he misses dearly, almost as much as food. His chest physically hurts to think that centuries of masterpieces will soon be lost forever if they haven’t been already. It feels like the least he can do to record evidence that some of his favourites ever existed.

Then his thoughts take a turn for the darker. He wonders how many of the artists who’d inspired him over the years survived. How many of them are living similarly to him right now? How many are faring better?

How many are gone, their talents lost to the world forever?

It’s only logical that his next thought is for the people in his own life, but that pain is too much to bear. It’s bad enough remembering his mum and how sick she got at the end, but at least he has an answer there. He knows exactly where she is.

Not knowing is somehow so much worse. If he were the kind of person who assumed the best and not the worst, he could convince himself that they’re all fine.

But of course, he’s not. He’s really not. So instead he fixates on all the ways this new world order has descended into chaos and anarchy, all the ways his father and brother and friends may be suffering at this very moment. How many of them would kill to be where Dan is, with a campfire in the woods and a rucksack full of supplies and a remarkably sound and healthy body?

He really doesn’t get a single moment of sleep.

But he survives, packing up and moving on the moment the sun touches the sky again.  
Luckily trekking through the woods takes a bit more effort than the beach, so he’s adequately distracted from worrying about things he can’t change.

He trudges onwards, singing along to the song that’s now playing on a loop in his brain. Ear worms used to annoy him but now he’s glad for it. He’s glad for anything that reminds him of the normalcy of his old life.

It goes like that for days: walk, eat a little, drink a little, build a fire, endure the terror of nighttime in the woods until it’s time to get up again and keep walking. His socks are mostly dry and his fires stay big enough to warm him well. The soles of his feet are sore and his face is all scratched up from walking into rogue branches.

He smells terrible. He can’t remember how long it’s been since he last took a bath in salty ocean water. He should’ve done it once more before he entered the woods but he was too cold to face the idea of it. When he looks down at his hands the colour of them doesn’t even look like his skin anymore. If his fingernails weren’t bitten to the quick he reckons they’d be black underneath.

His teeth are clean, so there is one part of him that isn’t coated in filth. That’s something to celebrate. But he’s going to run out of food soon. Very soon. And he’s already run out of water.

He’d started out the morning hopeful that today would be the day things would turn around for him, but he’s left that hope far behind now. His throat gets drier and drier with every hour that passes. He’s so tired he can barely even see the ground in front of him anymore. He should have known it would go like this. He should have trusted his instinct to stay out of the woods. He’s going to die in here because he wasn’t brave enough to stay and fight for a place he might actually have a chance of surviving.

It’s almost poetic, really; his lifelong habit of running away from anything that was difficult or scary is literally going to be the death of him.

He’s so desperate - or maybe delirious - that he starts doing something he hasn’t done since he was a boy. He’s praying, looking up at the underbrush of the trees and the sky that peaks between the reddening leaves to ask an entity he doesn’t believe in for help. He’s praying for rain or a pond or an end to the woods - or maybe just a miracle.

Then he hears something. Over the din of his own panic, he hears the soft trickling sound of water. Either he’s gone mad or he might have to reconsider his stance on spirituality, but either way he’s stumbling forward blindly now, following that glorious sound as quickly as his tired blistered feet will carry him.

It’s starting to get dark. How had he not noticed that? The trees are casting long shadows over the ground and he can’t see where he’s going anymore. His eyes don’t seem to be working but his ears still do, so he leaves it up to them to get him where he’s trying to go. He trips more than once, crashing all six plus feet of himself to the ground hard, but he gets right back up. His backpack isn’t heavy at all anymore and his mouth is dry as a desert.

Suddenly the ground disappears from beneath him and he’s falling again. When he lands there’s a splash and he’s cold and wet. He looks down and there it is, an actual fucking babbling brook, or a stream or something. He doesn’t fucking know what it is.

It’s water. He rips off his bag and tosses it aside so his blanket won’t get wet as he drops to his knees and cups the liquid gold, bringing handful after handful up to his mouth until his stomach feels dangerously full.

He’s pretty much soaked by the time his thirst is satiated, but he doesn’t have the energy to worry about it. He’s going to be cold as fuck until he can build a fire, and even then it’s going to suck.

But it’s not going to kill him. He has a blanket. And now he has water. He bursts into tears and crawls out of the stream to fall back against the ground in a mixture of relief and exhaustion. His sobs eventually morph into laughs and he doesn’t stop until his stomach is aching with the effort. Every single cell in his body is aching, and now the chill is starting to set in. He needs to get a grip on himself and start a fire going so he can dry his wet clothes.

He rolls over to push himself up and that’s when he sees it.

A house. A ways back from the stream, nestled in among the trees and there it is, a rundown looking cabin in the middle of the bloody woods.

His first reaction is a terror so visceral it freezes him up completely. He sits there wet and cold and covered in leaves and dirt and stares at the cabin like a deer in headlights, convinced someone is going to come barreling out the door and hack him to death with an axe or lock him in their basement and—

He stops himself from going down that particular thought spiral. This isn’t a horror film, this is real life. And that little cabin almost certainly doesn’t have a basement.

Everything is quiet. There’s no sound coming from the house, no smell or light to indicate a fire or even lanterns. He’d been making enough noise to wake the dead only moments ago, he reckons if someone was in there they’d have come out by now to check.

He wants to believe that. He wants so desperately for this place to be empty. He can barely comprehend the luxury of sleeping with a roof over his head. There might even be a bed in there.

And food.

That’s the thought that forces him up despite his innate instinct to flee. There’s water here and there might be food, both of which he’s desperate for. It’s also a shelter the likes of which he could never dream of building himself, and it’s presented itself at the exact moment he so badly needed it.

He grabs his backpack and fishes out his knife, keeping it grasped tightly in his hand as he moves toward the cabin, wincing with every crunched leaf and snapped twig underfoot.

Those sounds are all he can hear. There’s absolutely nothing to indicate that the little log house is anything but empty.

When he steps up onto the porch, the old wood creaks as it takes his weight. Every muscle in his body tenses, ready to run… but nothing happens. He inches toward the door, wrapping his fingers around the rusted handle. If ever there was a lock on it, it’s long gone now. He takes a shaky breath and pushes it open.

It’s dark enough that he can’t make out much detail of what’s inside, but the place is small. There’s only one level, and essentially just one room. With the last little bit of fading daylight coming in through a dirty glass window he can see the outline of a bed.

That’s all he needs. There’s clearly no one here. It’s silent as the dead. He stops himself from thanking the mythical man in the sky, because despite the fact that his prayers had been answered tenfold, he doesn’t want to give in to superstition. He needs to keep his mind sharp.

He drops his bag and strips off his all his clothes right there on the spot. He hasn’t slept in the better part of a week and that bed is calling his name. He has a moment of wondering if he should go back outside and wash himself off in the stream lest he sully the sheets, but he reckons he kind of already did that. He’ll clean himself properly in the morning.

He pulls his blanket out of his bag and climbs up onto the bed. The mattress is lumpy and the blanket is a thick wool that’s even more scratchy than his own. He burrows down under it and pulls his own on top of it, moaning out loud as the warmth starts to return to his damp, frigid limbs.

The pillow smells musty and all of it has without question been slept on by many different people since the last time it washed - and Dan couldn’t possibly care less. He’s still hungry, but he’s safe, and the moment he lays his head down on that pillow he falls quickly into the kind of heavy, dreamless sleep that he’d all but forgotten was even possible.

-

The sun is already up by the time he blinks his heavy eyes open. His first instinct is to sit bolt upright in panic at leaving himself exposed for so long, but it dissipates as quickly as it had come when he’s reminded that he’s probably more safe than he’s been in months. He lies back down and chuckles quietly, overjoyed anew at where he finds himself.

There’s a roof over his head. He would fear it’s too good to be true if he couldn’t also feel the sharp pangs of hunger in his stomach and the burn of over exertion in his muscles.

He stretches his stiff limbs and sits up again, leaning back against the headboard so he can survey his surroundings properly now that there’s enough light to make out all the details. There’s a wood burning stove above which are hung an array of pot and pans, a small table with two chairs, a rocking chair in the corner with another blanket draped over its arm. The far wall is taken up almost entirely by a stone fireplace, and much to Dan’s surprise, there’s a set of stairs in the corner of the room leading down.

So the place has a basement after all. A cellar, more likely, but that just makes Dan feel more hopeful. Maybe there’s food down there. There’s no refrigerator or television or even a toilet, no modern conveniences of any kind really. Everything is made of wood and metal and looks old and well-used, but that’s actually kind of perfect.

There’s a metal wash tub sat atop a small desk in the corner of the room. It’s nowhere near big enough to fit Dan’s body, so he can’t have a proper bath, but he reckons he could still use it to get himself clean. He could heat up the water on the stove first, and just the thought of it makes him want to weep. Maybe if he looks around he’ll even be able to find some soap.

There’s a wardrobe beside the bed, but he’s afraid to hope that it might contain clothes that would fit His own clothes lie in a wet heap on the dirty floor. He’ll have to deal with that before anything else. He has a change of socks and underwear, but he’s only got the one pair of trousers and the one threadbare jumper. He should have at least taken the time to drape them over a chair last night to dry, but he’d been a little out of sorts, to say the least.

He’s almost convinced himself it’d be ok to just stay in bed and ignore all the things he should do for a little while longer, when he sees something that makes his heart stop.

There’s a filthy pair of trainers and a small black backpack right beside the door. Dan bolts out of bed and pulls his trousers and jumper on, barely even registering the dampness. He grabs his knife, which he’d also idiotically left lying on the floor and stands there in the middle of the cabin, breaths coming fast and shallow, eyes scanning the room for something that simply isn’t there.

There just isn’t anywhere for a person to be hiding… and then Dan’s gaze stops on stairs.

Fuck.

He forces a deep breath in and then another, inhaling and exhaling slowly until he doesn’t feel like he’s going to sick from the stress of it all. He tries to be logical.

He’s been here probably something close to twelve hours by now. If someone is here, they know he’s here too, and are either unwilling or unable to cause him harm.

Right?

Or maybe those shoes and that backpack have been here for ages. Maybe their owner went out to find food and never came back.

Or maybe they’re on their way back right now.

He’s about to panic again when he hears a sound coming from down the stairs. It’s so quiet he can’t even make out what it is, but it’s definitely _something_. It doesn’t sound menacing, but he can’t be sure unless he checks.

“Hello?” he shouts, his voice much stronger than he actually feels.

He hears something like a whimper in response, and his stomach twists into knots knowing that unless he’s willing to leave this very second, he’s going to have to go down those stairs and find out what’s making that sound.

He can’t leave now. He barely has any supplies left and probably doesn’t even have enough energy to get more than a few kilometres before it gets dark again, so he grips the handle of his knife tighter and walks over to the top of the stairs. He can’t see what kind of room the stairs lead to as it’s too dark under the ground, but he can definitely make out that there’s something at the bottom of them.

Someone.

“Hello?” Dan shouts again, even louder this time.

He gets another whimper in response. It’s a person down there, it’s actually a fucking human being crumpled up at the bottom of these wood-covered steps carved into the ground. A whimpering human being. The lump they form is too big to indicate a child.

Dan stands there at the top of the steps, paralyzed. There are probably about fifty good, practical reasons to get the hell out of here right away, to leave this poor bastard where he found them and just run the fuck away.

But then he hears the whimpering form a single word. “Help.”

He knows right away that he’s fucked. This could very well be a trap, but there’s no way he’s going to leave now. If he ends up getting murdered then so be it. At least he’ll die with a clear conscience.

“Are you hurt?” Dan shouts. He’s not sure why he’s still shouting.

“Yes,” croaks the voice, so weak Dan can barely hear it.

He tucks the knife into the waist of his trousers and descends a few steps, wishing desperately that a torch was something he had in his bag. He feels as exposed and vulnerable as if he hadn’t put his clothes back on, but even as he gets closer, the human shape barely moves at all.

“Hey,” Dan says gruffly when he gets close to the bottom of the stairs. “Are you alone?” He can see now that the person is a grown man, and that his clothes are in even poorer shape than Dan’s are. Dan doesn’t know if that’s reassuring or not.

The man nods. Dan can’t see his face under the mass of tangled hair that’s fallen over it.

“Should I be expecting someone to come whack me over the head with a shovel or something?” Dan asks, stepping over the man’s body to get to the bottom of the stairs.

He doesn’t get an answer, so he crouches down to try to get a look at the bloke’s face. He has to push the matted hair out of the way, and when he does he finds the man’s eyes closed. He must have passed out.

Dan feels moisture on his hand where he’d touched the hair, and when he looks down he sees a small streak of blood across his palm. He shakes the guy’s shoulder, then. Hard. He’s really hoping he didn’t just watch the guy die right in front of him.

“Hey!” Dan shouts. “Hey! Wake up.” He just doesn’t think he can stand to stay in this cabin if there’s a dead body in the cellar.

He shakes the guy again, but gets no response. Pressing the pads of two trembling fingers to the stranger’s throat, he holds his breath as he tries to find a pulse, then breathes it out noisily when he finds one. It’s weak, and slow, but it’s there.

Dan stays crouched down with blood on his hands and the sick feeling that if he doesn’t get this guy up the stairs soon, it’ll be too late. God knows how long he’s been stuck here, and how much blood he’s lost.

But what if his back is broken or something? What if moving him makes things worse. Dan bites his lip and closes his eyes to block out how white this guy’s skin looks. He can’t leave him here. He just can’t do that, even though this has quickly turned into something straight out of a nightmare. He’d never be able to live with himself if he left this man on death’s door without at least trying to help.

Maybe it’s some kind of test. Maybe he really had been wrong about everything his whole life. Maybe his nan had been right about God and heaven and all of it, and this is some kind of test to see if Dan is worthy of the cabin that’s been bestowed upon him.

No. No, that’s rubbish. Dan balls his hands up into fists and grinds them against his closed eyes. That’s not what this is. This is just life now. This is just how it is. Death and disease and pain and horror are not things he has the luxury of pretending don’t exist anymore.

But that doesn’t mean he has to stand by and let himself be changed by it, either. He tries once more to wake the man up, slapping his face gently over and over.

This time it actually works. The man groans and opens his eyes. “What…?”

“You passed out,” Dan says. “We need to get you up the stairs.”

“My head hurts.” He sounds disoriented, like he could lose consciousness again at any moment.

Dan decides to leave his curiosity for later and get the job done as quickly as possible, asking only the questions he really needs the answers to. “Can you walk?”

“No. I don’t—” he coughs.

“What else hurts?” Dan asks impatiently. “Can you feel your feet?”

The man frowns, clearly not fully lucid. “What?”

Dan reaches down and grabs the guy’s foot, squeezing hard enough that it should cause pain if there’s still feeling there.

“Ow!”

“Ok,” Dan says, taking in a relieved breath. “That’s good, I think. Is anything broken?”

“I don’t… I don’t know.”

Dan steps up over his body and crouches down on the step above him. “Ok, mate. I’m just gonna haul you up like a sack of bricks, yeah? I’m guessing it’s gonna hurt like fuck. Help me if you can, you look like a big bloke.” Dan works his hands under the guy’s armpits. “Ready?”

The man nods weakly. Dan takes a backwards step up and pulls the guy with him - or tries to anyway. He’s way heavier than he looks and he cries out in pain the second he’s moved.

“Sorry,” Dan says roughly, without much actual sympathy. “But we’ve got a long way to go.”

“Do it,” the guy says through gritted teeth.

Dan leans down a little more, working his arms under this poor sod further so he can hook them under his armpits and get a better grip. He pulls with everything he has and falls backwards, landing ass first on the hard steps, taking his injured charge with him.

He sits there for a moment, biting back his curses and waiting for his ass to stop smarting when he realizes this is actually probably a much easier way to get the job done. He can use his legs instead of his back and just kind of scootch his ass backwards up the stairs.

“Are you alright?” the stranger croaks.

Dan tightens his hooked arms and braces himself to go again. “Fine.”

“I reckon my ankle is broken.”

Dan doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he just asks, “Ready?”

The man nods.

It takes a long time before Dan manages to get them both up to the top of the stairs. He collapses backwards when they’re there, chest heaving, arms aching. He’s sweating like a pig and his ass will no doubt be covered in bruises by this time tomorrow, but he did it. He feels a strange sense of pride in that. Hardship has made him stronger than he’d have ever thought himself capable.

“I’m just gonna lean you up against the wall, yeah?” Dan asks. “I’m too knackered to get you up on the bed.”

“My name is Phil,” the man says out of nowhere as Dan helps him sit up.

“Oh, right. Names,” Dan says stupidly. “Dan.”

Suddenly he feels unbearably awkward. They’re both filthy strangers who’ve just spent the better part of an hour bleeding and sweating all over each other.

“Thank you,” Phil says quietly. “You literally just saved my life.”

Dan can see blood matted in Phil’s hair, and one of his ankles looks swollen beneath his sock. He’s wearing a jacket that was probably once yellow and a pair of black jeans that are so ripped they might as well not even be there at this point. His long legs are stretched out in front of him, his arms hung loosely by his sides likes he’s a puppet whose strings have all been cut.

“What’s your deal?” Dan asks, standing up and backing away. He won’t allow himself to be lulled into feeling like this Phil person isn’t a threat until he knows it for sure.

Phil frowns. “What?”

“Why are you here?” Dan asks. “What happened to you? Is someone with you?”

“I told you, I’m alone.”

“People lie,” Dan says simply.

“Well I don’t.”

They stare at each other, sharing a prolonged moment of intense eye contact that Dan breaks first, looking over to the window to try to get a grip on himself.

“Why are you here?” he asks again, a lot less urgency in his tone.

“Probably same reason you are,” Phil says quietly.

“What happened to you?”

“I think I fell down the stairs.” Phil closes his eyes and leans his head back against the wall. “I’m clumsy.”

“How long were you down there?”

Phil shrugs. “Long time, I reckon. I thought—” his voice breaks. He clears his throat and tries again, but Dan can tell he’s not in a good way. He opens his eyes again and looks right at Dan. “I really thought I was going to die down there.”

“You do kind of look like death.”

He hates himself as soon as he’s said it. It’s not a kind thing to say. It’s not actually what he wants to say, but sometimes words just come out of his stupid face without being given permission first.

It’s been a long, long time since he talked to another person. Maybe he’s forgotten how to do it.

“I feel like it, too,” Phil says. He squeezes his eyes shut and a sob wracks up from his chest.

Dan feels a wave of emotion of his own threatening to break through the dam of sarcasm and standoffishness, so he slips away quietly to leave Phil alone for a few minutes. He grabs the empty water bottle from his backpack and heads outside to fill it in the stream.

It’s strange how much less foreboding the trees feel now that he has a shelter from them. It’s actually a nice day; the sun peeks out from the clouds and shines down with a hint of warmth. There’s a slight breeze that cools the sweat clinging to his back and the birds are chirping and it would all be so idyllic if there weren’t a broken man crying inside his cabin.

He kneels at the stream and fills the water bottle before cleaning the blood off his hands. He scoops a few handfuls to drink himself and then heads back inside. He doesn’t know one blinking thing about this Phil person besides the fact that he needs Dan, and apparently that’s enough.

For now. He’s still got to remember to be cautious.

Phil isn’t crying anymore, but his eyes are red and his cheeks are wet. Dan hands him the water bottle. “Drink this,” he says firmly.

Phil grabs it without thanks and drinks it like he hasn’t seen water in days. Dan’s stomach clenches to think that, actually, he probably hasn’t. He drinks the whole bottle down in one go, spilling it all over his jacket and smearing the dried blood and dirt caked there.

“God,” Dan mutters. “You’re a fucking mess, mate.”

Phil heaves in a breath and hands the empty bottle back. “So are you.”

“Yeah,” Dan agrees. “True.”

“What are you going to do with me?” Phil asks.

Dan frowns. “What d’you mean?”

Phil shrugs. “You’re not gonna share this place with me.”

“It’s not like it’s mine. Besides, technically you were here first.”

“I can’t walk,” Phil says. “I can’t fight.”

Dan’s frown deepens. “Who said anything about fighting?”

“That’s what people do now.”

Dan feels something in his chest, something small and warm that he can’t name. “I don’t,” he says quietly.

“That’s why you’re here,” Phil says. “You’re running, just like me.”

“I thought I was gonna die alone out in the woods until I found this place.”

Phil nods. “Reckon I still might.”

“What supplies have you got?” Dan asks. He doesn’t want to dwell on this conversation anymore. It’s not good for him.

Phil laughs bitterly. “Nothing useful. I ate all my food ages ago. The last shop I found was a Boots, so if you want shampoo or freaking—”

“You’ve got shampoo?”

Phil nods. “I’ve got loads of useless crap like that. Hair cutting scissors, surgical spirit, soap, razor—”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Dan interrupts again. “You have all that?”

Phil nods. “Fat lot of good it’s done me.”

“We can get clean,” Dan says in awe. “Like, properly clean.”

“How? You got a shower hidden here somewhere?”

“I told you, this place isn’t mine.” Dan points to the wash tub. “We can fill that up with water.”

Phil looks stricken. “I can’t walk. I can’t even see straight. I think I might have a concussion.”

Dan squats down and looks at Phil’s hair a little closer. “Well, you do have a fuckload of blood on your head.”

“Jesus Christ,” Phil mutters.

Dan doesn’t even think about what he says next before he says it. “We’ll fix you up.”

Phil looks up at him with surprise written all over his face. Dan can’t rightfully say he isn’t just as surprised himself. He doesn’t know this person. At all. And yet here he is pledging to take care of him. It goes against everything he’s had to learn since the world was gripped by the most brutal kind of change. It’s the exact opposite of his strategy so far, which really boils down to two things: keep moving, and stay away from other people.

Maybe he just wants to prove to himself that he still knows what it means to be a good person. Maybe helping Phil back on his feet is actually about making sure he doesn’t lose every last shred of his own humanity.

Maybe he’s just a little worn down by his crushing, all consuming loneliness and this is a fold in the fabric of his life as he knows it now, a moment where things can be different without also having to be terrifying.

“Do you swear you’re not going to chop me up into little pieces the second I let my guard down?” Dan asks.

“I swear on my mum’s life.”

“Mate. I don’t even know if your mum is still alive.”

Phil’s face crumples and he brings his hands up to hide it. “Neither do I.”

Dan’s not sure he’s ever heard anyone sound more defeated in his entire life. “Sorry,” he mutters. “If it makes you feel better, mine isn’t.”

Phil lifts his head from his hands. “Why the hell would that make me feel better? Do you think I’m some kind of monster?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know you.”

Phil sighs, rubbing his bearded jaw. “Fair enough.” He sounds defeated again, but more in a hardened sort of way. He tries to pull his leg up, apparently momentarily forgetting the state of his ankle, crying out in pain when he is so rudely reminded.

Dan walks over and crouches down automatically. “We should have a look at that.”

Phil frowns. “Thought you didn’t trust me.”

“Would you?” he asks, locking his eyes onto Phil’s again. Now that he’s up close he’s kind of shocked at how blue they are.

“Probably.”

Dan could say something cutting and he almost does, but he stops himself. He’s been harsh enough already. At least for the moment, Phil clearly doesn’t pose a threat.

“Just shut up and let me look at your ankle.”

“Not like I can stop you,” Phil says.

Dan ignores him and reaches out to pull Phil’s sock off. It wouldn’t look good regardless of the injury, as Phil is pretty much filthy from head to toe, but even then it _really_ doesn’t look good.

“Shit,” Phil murmurs.

It’s so swollen it doesn’t even look like an ankle anymore, like his calf ends where his foot starts. It’s bruised a purple so deep and dark it almost looks more like his ankle is caked in mud.

“Can you move it?” Dan asks. He doubts he has any more qualification than Phil to determine whether or not it’s broken, but Phil is probably concussed.

“I’m scared to try.”

“Try anyway,” Dan orders.

He does, wincing and sucking in a sudden sharp breath, but he’s able to move his foot a little.

“That’s good!”

“It hurts,” Phil says.

“Of course it bloody hurts, look at that fucking thing.” Dan drops Phil’s sock on the floor. “There’s no bone sticking out, so that’s a good sign.”

“Oh god,” Phil moans, closing his eyes and tipping his head back against the wall. “What am I gonna do?”

“I’m gonna see if I can feel a break,” Dan says decisively, despite having exactly zero confidence he’d even be able to determine such a thing.

“Why?” Phil asks, keeping his eyes closed. “It’s not like we can do anything if there is one.”

“If it’s broken you can’t walk on it,” Dan says. “If it’s not, you can.”

“How do you know?”

“My brother,” Dan says quietly. “He used to run marathons for fun. He fucked up his ankles more times than I could count. He used to send me the nastiest snapchats.”

Phil actually cracks a tiny smile. “My brother was athletic, too. I wasn’t jealous at all.”

“Was?”

The smile fades. “I dunno. I don’t know where he is. I don’t know where any of my people are.”

“Sorry,” Dan says. “I don’t either.”

“But you know your mum…?”

He nods. “I was visiting her when she got sick.” His chest hurts even just to remember it.

“Fuck,” Phil murmurs after a long moment of silence.

“I’m gonna feel your ankle now,” Dan says, desperate to erase those images. “Brace yourself.”

He wraps his hand around Phil’s ankle and squeezes. He can’t really feel anything besides swelling, but Phil doesn’t seem too bothered by it, which he figures must be a good sign.

“If it’s broken it’s probably just a hairline fracture,” Dan says, trying to sound like he knows what he’s talking about.

“It hurts,” Phil says quietly. “A lot.”

“Sometimes sprains are worse than breaks. Your tendons are all stretched out and loose and filled with blood that shouldn’t be there.”

Phil scrunches up his face. “Ew, god.”

“It’s good news, idiot,” Dan says, standing up off the ground and stretching his arms over his head. He can tell he’s going to be sore tomorrow. “You should try walking on it.”

Phil’s eyes go wide. “Why? Because you want me to leave?”

Dan rolls his eyes and holds out his hand. “Just do it, you big baby. I’m not gonna keep dragging your ass around if I don’t have to.”

Phil still looks wary. “I feel like I might pass out again. My head is all wobbly.”

Dan drops his hand. “When was the last time you ate?”

Phil lifts his uninjured leg up to his chest and rests his forehead on his knee. “I don’t remember.”

Dan takes a moment just to look at Phil and let the strangeness of the situation he finds himself in wash over him. He doesn’t even know where to start. He’s hungry and dirty and sore and Phil is all of things but dialed up to eleven, along with a fucked up ankle and a concussion and a bleeding head wound to top it all off.

Dan bites back the feeling of helplessness clawing at his chest and takes a steadying breath. “Do you have a torch?”

Phil nods. “In my bag. It’s almost out of battery and I don’t have any more spares.”

“Why didn’t you bring it with you on the stairs?” Dan asks. “Might’ve saved you all this trouble.”

Phil sighs. “Because I’m stupid.”

Dan ignores that and goes over to grab the bag and fish it out. He sees the shampoo and soap Phil mentioned earlier and it fills him with anticipation, and the surgical spirit will be useful for cleaning Phil’s wound. He can’t fathom why Phil would call this stuff useless.

He pulls out the torch and turns back toward Phil. “I’m gonna go see if there’s food down there.”

“Careful on the stairs,” Phil says, completely deadpan.

Dan just looks at him for a beat before bursting out laughing. The bar is set pretty low for jokes considering Dan can’t even remember the last time he laughed for real, but he reckons it would still be funny even if that wasn’t the case.

He’s still chuckling when he says, “Shut the fuck up,” goodnaturedly, wiping the moisture from his eyes.

Phil gives him a crooked little smirk. “I’m glad my peril is funny to you.”

“Just don’t die before I come back,” Dan says.

“No promises. Better hurry.”

Dan flips him off, then turns on the torch and hurries down the steps. He’s going as fast as he can, and not just because of Phil’s warning about the batteries.

It’s pitch black down here. Dan doesn’t do well with that, especially in a place he’s never been. His whole body is tensed for faces to appear when he moves the light around, for some scary horrible thing to pounce at him from the shadows. But blessedly, he soon forgets about any emotion but utter elation.

There’s food down here. Tons of it. In fact, there’s more than food. He can’t make everything out because the light from the torch is already starting to dim, but he can tell that this hole in the ground is fucking _stocked_. He grabs a couple of the closest tins of food and rushes back up the stairs.

“Holy fuck, Phil, there’s—” His words die in his throat as he’s stopped dead at the top of the stairs.

Phil is slumped to the side, clearly unconscious.

Or worse.

Dan drops the tins and gets down on his knees to grab Phil’s shoulders and lay him down flat on the floor. He checks for a pulse again and tilts his own head to the side right above Phil’s mouth.

He can feel a pulse. He can feel Phil’s breath. He heaves a sigh of relief and buries his head in his hands, letting the emotion that had threatened to escape earlier burst forth.

He shouldn’t be feeling this. He doesn’t even know this guy.

But he’s feeling something, whether he should be or not. He’s feeling relieved that Phil’s not dead and worried that he won’t be able to keep him from staying not dead. It’s not his responsibility, but it might as well be. It feels like it is.

He wipes his eyes harshly on his jumper, sniffling and clearing his throat gruffly to try to get a grip on himself. He needs to make a plan. He needs to do something.

Phil needs to eat, Dan reckons, but he can’t exactly do that if he keeps passing out.

So maybe it would be better to let him sleep for now, in which case Dan decides after looking at Phil for all of two seconds that it’s time to clean the poor guy up. If he does have an open wound on his head and it gets infected, nothing in the world Dan could do would save him.

The first thing he does is grab his blanket off the bed and drape it over Phil’s long body. The floor probably isn’t the best place for him to rest, but there’s no way in hell Dan could get him on the bed, so it’ll have to do for the time being. He’ll slip a pillow under Phil’s head when his hair isn’t so filthy.

Ten minutes later he’s arranging logs and sticks in the oven and lighting them up. While the fire builds heat he grabs a pot and takes it outside to fill with stream water. The wash tub he places right beside Phil’s body, as well as all the relevant supplies from Phil’s bag. While he waits for that first pot of water to get hot he takes the opportunity to inspect the wardrobe beside the bed.

It’s more good news. In the top drawer he finds candles, matches, forks, spoons, sharp knives, plates, a tin opener, a couple of stainless steel mugs. In the second are cloths and towels. The rest of the drawers are full of socks and pants and thick wool jumpers and heavy denim and corduroy trousers. They’re about as far from fashionable as possible, but they’re clean and sturdy and sensible. Dan couldn’t have even dreamed of finding such a bounty. He takes out a cloth and a towel and lays them beside Phil’s head as he goes to fetch more water.

It takes bloody ages, but eventually he’s got enough warm water to at least get Phil’s hair clean. He kneels by Phil’s head and assesses what he’s got to work with. It seems that the one thing Phil didn’t have in that bag was something he sorely needs: a hairbrush. His hair is tangled with blood and dirt and leaves, so Dan makes the executive decision to reach for the scissors and just have at it.

He tries not to make it a total hack job, but it’s hard to be precise when he’s working with such a mess. He ends up cutting it quite close to the scalp, noting with surprise that while the hair that comes off appears black, what remains is something closer to a coppery brown colour.

It definitely looks choppy when he’s cut most of the tangled hair away, but he reckons he can fix it up later when Phil’s awake and there aren’t more pressing matters at hand - that is if Phil even gives a toss about what his hair looks like. Maybe he’ll just be grateful that it’s clean and out of his eyes.

Now that the hair is gone, Dan can clearly see where the blood had been coming from, and he’s relieved to find that it’s really quite a small cut. He doesn’t waste time, scooping out some water with the pot and pouring it on Phil’s scalp. Phil stirs, his eyes moving under the lids, but he doesn’t wake.

Dan squeezes out a small amount of shampoo and lathers it into what remains of Phil’s hair, inhaling the fruity scent and nearly weeping with joy. He massages it far longer than he needs to, but when he finally stops and goes to fill the pot with water to rinse the suds away, he hears Phil’s croaky voice say, “Done so soon? I was enjoying that.”

Dan whips his head around to see that Phil’s eyes are open now and he’s grinning.

“How long have you been awake?”

Phil shrugs. “Might’ve woken up as soon as you started touching my head.”

“You fucking git.”

Phil chuckles. “Thanks for the massage. That was brilliant.”

“Well I cut off all your hair first.”

Phil shrugs again. “I wasn’t using it for anything. Thanks for heating up the water, by the way. You didn’t have to do that.”

“I didn’t have to do anything,” Dan says bluntly.

“That’s true. But I’m glad you did.”

Dan doesn’t know what to say. He’s filled with relief that Phil is awake and apparently feeling well enough to crack jokes, but behind it is a strange urge to negate the vulnerability of his kindness.

“You’ve got a gash on your head.”

Phil lifts his arm up like he’s going to touch it, but it hangs there indecisively for a moment before he lowers it again. He’s still got shampoo all over his head. “Is it bad?”

“No,” Dan says, dipping the pot into the water again. “You got lucky. Close your eyes.”

Phil does and Dan pours the water slowly and carefully over the suds that cling to his hair. He makes a mess of the floor, but it’ll dry eventually.

“Ok,” he says when it’s done. “Your hair is officially clean.”

“Thank you,” Phil says, opening his eyes again. “I owe you.”

“Well you can do the rest, yeah? Wash your own bits.”

Phil snorts. “Were you seriously going to wash my bits?”

“No. Fuck you, shut up. You smell, ok? It’s offending my nose.”

“You don’t smell any better,” Phil points out.

“I know, dickhead. I’m gonna go wash as soon as you shut up.”

“What’s the point?” Phil shrugs. “Our clothes are filthy anyway.”

Dan points to the wardrobe. “It’s full of stuff we can wear. I’ll help you sit up and take your shit off so you can wash up the best you can. Then you need to eat.”

Phil’s face lights up. “There’s food?”

Dan can’t help smiling at that. “Tons. This place must belong to some kind of prepper. It has like, everything.”

“Wow,” Phil murmurs. “We really did get lucky.”

“I know.”

They’re quiet for a while before Dan starts to feels itchy under his skin. “Ok, you should clean up before the water’s cold again. Let’s—”

“I can take off my own clothes,” Phil interrupts. “I’ve been humiliated enough for one day. Just help me sit up and I’ll do the rest.”

Dan shrugs. “If that’s what you want.” His knees crack as he stands up and stretches out his back. He helps Phil sit up and lean back against the wall, then slides the wash tub within Phil’s reach.

He leaves Phil with a cloth, a towel, a change of clothes and instructions to shout when he’s all done. Dan takes the shampoo, a piece of the soap and a towel and change of clothes of his own outside. He’d prefer to have his first bath in warm water but he doesn’t want to wait a second longer.

As soon as he gets to the stream he strips off his clothes and sits down in the water. It’s cold enough to prick at his skin and cover his arms in goosebumps, but it feels bloody amazing to dunk his head in and get his hair wet enough to lather shampoo into his filthy overgrown curls.

Next to drinking this water last night, washing himself from head to toe is probably the best feeling in the entire fucking world. It feels like a lot more than just taking a bath. It feels like hope being restored, like his humanity being handed back to him just as he’d started to fear he was losing it for good.

He spends a long time scrubbing down. It takes a lot of work to get the soap to actually lather, and when it does it’s a murky grey colour from the sheer amount of dirt on his body.

There’s a hint of tingling in his gut when he gets to cleaning himself between his legs. It gives him pause, if only for the fact that it’s been so long since he even thought about needs as trivial as that. He reckons he could get off in about thirty seconds at this point, but something about the fact that he’s not alone anymore makes it feel inappropriate. He’s made it this far without, and it’s not like he’s actually turned on. It can wait.

The jeans he puts on after he’s dried off are too short and a lot less tight than the ones he used to wear, but the jumper is black and oversized which is actually exactly how he likes them. He puts on the socks when he gets back to the porch and knocks softly on the cabin door.

“You decent?”

“As much as I’m going to get,” Phil replies, sounding out of breath.

Dan opens the door and is stopped in surprise before he can even properly enter the cabin. Phil is sat on the edge of the bed, clean, fully dressed and clean shaven, looking like a completely different person.

“Wow,” Dan says after too long a silence. “You look…”

Phil looks at him expectantly.

“Better,” Dan finishes. “And younger.”

Phil laughs, rubbing his jaw. “It’s the beard.”

Dan leaves the door open so he can empty the wash tub outside and chuck all Phil’s hair into the bush. He chances a look at Phil when he comes back inside, only to find that Phil is already watching him keenly. Dan can’t help staring back, despite the awkwardness.

Phil just looks so _different_. It’s like Dan hadn’t quite registered that Phil was really a whole person before. He was simply a threat to be assessed, an obstacle to overcome. A fly in the ointment.

Suddenly he isn’t really any of those things. He is decidedly a person, and a surprisingly attractive one at that. Not that that has anything to do with anything, Dan just hadn’t been expecting the person underneath all that hair and filth to be so… fit.

It’s really been too long since Dan has spent time with another person. He doesn’t remember how it’s all supposed to work.

“You got up on the bed by yourself,” he says, mostly just to try to fill the silence in the room with something a little less tense.

“You were right, it’s not broken. It hurts but I can walk on it. Or hobble, anyway.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah. Thank you, by the way,” Phil says softly. “You literally saved my life.”

Dan squirms under the weight of Phil’s sincerity. They don’t know each other well enough for all their words to be loaded down with such feeling.

“So does that mean you’re not cross that I chopped off your hair?”

Phil shrugs. “I can’t see myself. I can pretend it’s still there. I guess I’m officially a ginger now though, eh?”

Dan tilts his head. “It definitely has a gingerish quality to it.”

“The black was the last vestige of my emo days. Does that make me an adult?”

“How old are you?” Dan asks.

“Thirty two.”

Dan laughs. “I’d say you’re an adult then, mate. Sorry.”

“Damnit. I am not prepared.”

“None of us ever are.” Dan finally manages to look away, turning around to pick up the tins of food he’d dropped in a panic earlier. “Are you prepared to eat?”

“Hell yeah,” Phil says enthusiastically. “What are we eating?”

Dan looks down. “Corn.”

“Hm. Wouldn’t have been my first choice but I reckon I’d eat just about anything right now.”

“I’ll go back down later with a candle so I can actually see. From what I could tell there was a ton of stuff down there.” Dan fetches the tin opener and two spoons from the wardrobe and carries them over to the table. “Come over here, no eating allowed on the bed. Don’t exactly have a washing machine if we spill shit on the sheets.”

Phil gets up gingerly and limps his way over to the table. He sighs in relief as he sits, then watches Dan struggle with the rusted tin opener before he finally gets the hang of it.

“My brother’s girlfriend’s was called Corn,” he says, his voice taking on a dreamy sort of quality.

“Really?” Dan asks, sliding Phil a spoon and then one of the tins.

“Well, Cornelia. We called her Corny.”

Dan doesn’t know how to respond to that, so he scoops a spoonful of the mushy yellow kernels into his mouth. “Mm,” he says sarcastically. “Delicious.”

“Could be worse,” Phil says with his mouth full. “Could be beets. Or like, sardines or something.”

“Or beans,” Dan says with a shudder. “I’ve eaten enough beans in the past few months to last the rest of my life.”

“I hate tinned beans,” Phil says, shoveling more corn into his gob.

“You should pace yourself,” Dan warns. “Don’t eat it too fast.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m the one who’ll have to clean up your sick.”

Phil cracks a grin. “Fair enough.”

“How’s your head?” Dan asks.

“It hurts.” He takes a smaller bite of corn this time and chews it with exaggerated slowness while he looks straight at Dan. “But I’ll live.”

“Maybe you should have a nap after this.”

Phil narrows his eyes. “You gonna make off with all the supplies?”

“I might.”

They look at each other for a beat, then Phil says, “You know what I miss?”

“What’s that?” Dan asks, leaning back in his chair.

“Coffee.”

“Fuck me. I’d kill for coffee.”

“I don’t think there’s anything I’d kill for,” Phil says. “But I really miss coffee.”

“I wouldn’t _actually_ kill for coffee. I mean, clearly. I wouldn’t be hiding out in these bloody woods if I… well. You know.”

Phil nods. “I know.”

“Maybe they have coffee downstairs. Or tea.”

“Do you think they have pancakes?”

Dan snorts.

“I just realized something,” Phil says in alarm. “We could get scurvy.”

“Um..”

“Seriously. What have you eaten lately that had vitamin C in it?”

“Do tinned peaches have vitamin C?” Dan asks.

Phil gawks. “You had peaches?”

“For a bit. They were heavy as fuck to carry around but worth it.”

“What if all that’s down there is corn? Can people survive off corn alone?”

“I don’t know,” Dan admits. “But it’s better than nothing. It’s better than what either of us had yesterday.”

Phil nods. “Guess you’re right. Sorry. My head hurts.” There’s a scraping sound of metal on metal indicating that Phil has gotten to the bottom of his tin. “Crap,” he mutters. “I’m so hungry still.”

Dan rolls his eyes and slides his own tin across the table.

“Oh, no. I can’t—”

“Just shut up and eat them,” Dan interrupts. “I can’t deal with the stress of you passing out a third time.”

Phil cocks his head to the side. “Is me passing out stressful to you?”

Dan ignores him, pushing his chair back from the table and standing up. “I’m going to get more water.”

When he comes back, Phil is back in bed. “I’m taking your advice and having a sleep. It feels like there’s a little dude playing drums right against my brain.”

Dan resists the urge to smile. It’s way too soon for him to feel this fond of a complete stranger. “Ok. I’m gonna go out and collect as much firewood as I can.”

“You work too hard,” Phil says.

“Maybe you don’t work hard enough,” Dan counters.

“Oof. You sound like my dad.”

“I sound like _my_ dad, actually. At least back when I was a teenager.”

Phil frowns. “So like, last year?”

Dan frowns back incredulously. “Are you… you’re being serious?”

“You can’t be more than early twenties.”

“I’m twenty seven,” Dan says indignantly. “Or no, wait. Do you know what month it is?”

“I think September? Or maybe October now, I dunno.”

“So I’m twenty eight. Fuck.”

“No offense, but you have a baby face,” Phil informs him. “Also your hair is curly.”

“Does that contribute to the baby face?”

“Not really. It’s just cute.”

Dan cocks an eyebrow.

“I mean. Nice,” Phil fumbles. “It’s nice.”

Dan reaches up to touch the curls. They feel like actual hair again which is nice, but now that they’re clean and somewhat detangled he can feel just how long they’ve gotten. “I must look like a true hobbit by now.”

“Who doesn’t love a hobbit?”

“Orcs, for one.”

Phil smiles. “You’re just as nerdy as me, aren’t you?”

“How dare you. I could out-nerd you any day.”

“I’m going to prove you wrong as soon as my head doesn’t feel like it’s going to split in half.”

“Ok weirdo,” Dan says. “Sleep.”

-

Unfortunately shoes aren’t something he’s been able to find in the cabin, so he’s forced to wear his own, which haven’t had nearly enough time to dry. He takes off his socks first and cringes as the cold and damp envelops his toes, but as soon as he starts walking they warm to his body temperature.

He collects wood for what feels like hours, piling the logs up on the porch and taking a rather deep satisfaction at watching that pile grow. He hates to admit that there’s a real pride in doing such physical labour, but there definitely is. The sweat he works up feels earned, and it’s reassuring to know he won’t have to go outside next time he wants to make a fire.

He drops another few logs on the pile and is about to go back out for more when he hears something coming from inside the cabin.

“You awake?” he calls.

“Yeah,” Phil calls back.

Dan opens the door and is disoriented at first by what he sees: The table is covered in food, some spots stacked as many as three tins high.

He gawks at Phil with what is probably a very stupid look on his face. “What the fuck?”

Phil shrugs. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“You could’ve fallen again and broken your face!”

“I didn’t want to be useless,” Phil says in a small voice. “You’re doing all the work.”

Dan shakes his head. “You’ve got a busted ankle. And head.”

“The more I walk the less my ankle hurts. And there’s nothing I can do about my head. Unless there’s paracetamol down there.”

“You could sleep,” Dan says firmly. “Which is what you were supposed to do.” He’s not quite sure why he’s so pressed about it. Phil isn’t actually his responsibility to keep safe.

“I wanted to make myself useful.”

“Why?” Dan asks. “You didn’t need to. I said I’d—”

“I want to stay, ok?” Phil blurts. “I don’t want you to realize you’d be better off alone.”

Dan’s mouth snaps shut, then opens again to say, “Oh.”

“I don’t like being alone,” Phil says quietly. “And I’m obviously crap at surviving on my own. I don’t want to die.”

“Jesus,” Dan mutters. “You’re not going to die. I’m not making you leave. I told you this place isn’t mine to claim.”

“I don’t think people are bothered about what belongs to who anymore. They just take whatever they can take.”

Dan looks at Phil intently. “I’m not people. I’m the guy who dragged you up the stairs and washed your hair and gave you my corn.”

Phil opens his mouth and then closes it, then opens it again. “Why are you so cross?”

Dan sighs, scrubbing his hands down over his face. It’s a valid question, one to which he doesn’t even know the answer himself.

“You don’t trust me either, but I’m not shouting at you.”

“I haven’t given you any _reason_ not to trust me,” Dan says.

“And I have?”

That shuts Dan up for a moment. He looks away from Phil and over to the table to see what kind of haul Phil has amassed. “How did you do all this?”

“Very carefully,” Phil quips.

“Will you humour me and not go on the stairs alone anymore?” Dan asks. “I won’t shout. I’d just feel like shit if you fell and broke your head open for real.”

Phil crosses his arms. “Fine. But from now on you have to let me help you with stuff.”

“Not today,” Dan says. “You need to rest your head, mate. You won’t be able to help with me anything if you’ve got permanent brain damage.”

“Fine.”

“Fine,” Dan says back, struggling to contain his smirk.

“Are you done being a dick?” Phil asks.

Dan cracks a smile. “Yes.”

“Good. Because I found something amazing and I’m dying to show you.”

-

They sit next to each other on the porch, watching the woods and basking in what is surely the most relaxing moment either of them have had in a long, long time.

“Cheers,” Dan says and holds up his mug. “You did good.”

“A toast to… I dunno. Frickin miracles, I guess,” Phil replies, banging his mug into Dan’s.

“Definitely.” Dan takes a sip of his condensed milk-sweetened instant coffee and moans. “God. This is better than sex.”

“It sounds like you _are_ having sex.”

“I am,” Dan says, taking another long drink. “This coffee is straight up fucking my mouth.”

“Dan!” Phil shrieks. “Ew!”

“Oh come on.” He punches Phil’s shoulder gently. “You can’t tell me this isn’t the best thing you’ve ever had in your mouth.”

“It is,” Phil agrees quickly. “But it’s not… doing that. It’s not that rough. It’s like— love. It’s making sweet sweet love to my mouth.”

Dan scrunches up his face. “That sounds horrible.”

“You started it,” Phil says, sticking his tongue out like a child.

“And I meant every word.”

“Is it possible to get drunk without drinking any alcohol?” Phil asks. “I feel a little drunk.”

“I mean, caffeine is a drug. So maybe we’re a bit high.”

Phil nods, wrapping his fingers around his mug tightly. “I never did drugs, did you?”

“Yeah,” Dan admits easily. “Nothing too hard and never super regularly, but… yeah.”

“My mum would’ve killed me if I so much as smoked a cigarette.”

Dan gives him an incredulous look. “You never smoked a cigarette? Not even once?”

“Once. I was like twelve, and it made me sick like immediately. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her more cross.”

“I’m trying to decide if that’s cute or pathetic.”

“Neither,” Phil says. “It was humiliating. She shouted at me in front of all my mates.”

Dan shrugs. “At least she cared enough to be pissed off. I could’ve smoked a pack a day and my mum wouldn’t have even known.”

Phil gives him a rather horrified look.

“My parents worked a lot,” Dan adds quickly. “They weren’t really around that much.”

“That’s sad,” Phil says. He sounds so sincere it makes Dan squirm.

“Where did you live when it all went down?” Dan asks, suddenly rather desperate to change the subject.

“Manchester. You?”

“London.”

“Fancy.”

Dan laughs. “You wouldn’t say that if you’d seen my flat. This place may actually be an improvement.”

“What are you doing so far up north?” Phil asks.

“Where are we?”

“I don’t know for sure. I just know we’re a hell of a lot closer to Manchester than London.”

“How did you end up here?” Dan asks, hoping Phil will forget that Dan hadn’t actually answered his question.

Phil’s whole demeanour changes then. His face falls and he looks away from Dan, jaw clenched so tightly Dan can see the muscle flex. “Can we talk about something else?”

“Oh. Yeah, sure. I— sorry. Yeah.”

“I just don’t… It feels better here. I’m not ready to relive things.”

Dan shakes his head. “I get it. I didn’t mean to—”

“Do you think it’s weird?” Phil asks. “That we both ended up here at the same time? I didn’t see anyone else in the woods this whole time, did you?”

Dan shakes his head. “I didn’t see anything.”

Phil nods and takes another sip of his coffee. He looks out at the trees and says, “Do you believe in fate?”

“No.” Dan’s voice takes on a harder edge, hoping Phil will take the hint.

“So, what? It’s just coincidence?”

“You think we were fated to meet each other?”

Phil shifts a little against the hard wood of the porch. “I didn’t say that.”

Dan ignores him. “I hope fate isn’t real. I really fucking hope it wasn’t written into some great cosmic plan that most of the people on the planet had to get sick and die. I hope it wasn’t my mum’s destiny to die while I watched.”

“Dan—”

Dan puts his nearly empty mug down harder than he intends to. It makes a bit of a banging noise that feels at once satisfying and over the top, but his head is suddenly full of the images that haunt him more than any other, and all he wants now is to run away for a little while.

He stands up and goes inside to grab his notepad and pen from his backpack. It’s the only hobby he has left, the only thing he can do that serves no purpose but the peace of mind it brings.

Or that he hopes it’ll bring, anyway. It probably won’t work this time, but he knows he can’t stay here on this porch sharing space with someone who accepts the waste that has been laid to humanity as part of a bigger plan.

If fate is real then it can go fuck itself, and so can Phil for even bringing it up.

He ignores Phil’s questions as he blows past, keeping his eyes focused on the trees, his fingers gripped so tightly around his pen that it causes pain. He doesn’t want Phil to see him cry.

-

He doesn’t come back until the first signs of sunset make themselves known. He still has plenty of time before it gets properly dark and he hadn’t gone far, but he doesn’t want to chance getting lost out here and not being able to find his way back.

He’s already gotten to the place where he’s embarrassed about his outburst. He knows why Phil’s words felt like a punch to his stomach and he’s not going to apologize for having an emotional reaction, but he does wish he had a better poker face. Phil hadn’t meant any harm, in fact he’d probably been trying for the exact opposite.

He stops on the porch with his hand on the door and takes a deep breath before pushing it open. To his surprise it’s nice and warm inside, the room lit up by an impressive roar of flames in the fireplace and the smell of food hanging in the air.

It’s like something out of a period film. Phil is stood at the stove in his ridiculous old man jumper, stirring something in a big cast iron pot. There’s a candle on the table that hasn’t been lit yet and two bowls set out waiting to be filled.

Dan realizes suddenly that he’s absolutely starving, and any lingering anger he’d felt towards Phil evaporates immediately.

“What is that?” he asks as he squats down to put his notebook back in his bag.

“Stew.”

“You made stew?”

Phil chuckles. “No, course not. But I found a couple tins of it.”

“It smells amazing,” Dan says, walking over to stand beside Phil and watch him stir it. “Oh my god it has actual meat in it.”

Phil laughs at him again. “Of course.”

“I haven’t eaten meat in years.”

“Oh.” Phil turns to look at him. “Crap, sorry.”

Dan shakes his head. “Veganism was dead to me the instant I became an endangered species.”

“Oh wow, veganism,” Phil murmurs. “I could have never lived without pizza.”

“Giving up cheese was probably the single hardest thing I’ve ever had to do,” Dan admits. “Besides… you know. All the real stuff.”

Phil nods, mercifully choosing to keep the conversation lighthearted. “I could give up cheese pretty easily considering I loathe the stuff, but pizza is an exception.”

Dan gapes. “Are you actually shitting down my legs?”

“Ew, no, what? I just don’t like cheese. It tastes like feet.”

“Your brain was broken long before this concussion, mate,” Dan says, shaking his head.

“What do you think happened to all the cows and sheep and goats on all the farms whose owners—” Phil shuts himself up abruptly, shooting a quick glance in Dan’s direction and then back to the pot whose contents are now bubbling rather violently. “Sorry. I’m not trying to ask stupid questions, I just—”

“I reckon they all broke out of their cages and are living in the fields wild and free,” Dan says. “I reckon they’ve never been happier.”

Phil smiles. “Yeah. I bet they did. I like that.”

Dan elbows him gently in the side. “That’s gonna burn if you don’t pull it off now.”

Phil nods and pulls the pot off the burner. “I feel like we should be cooking more stuff so we’re not wasting the wood it took to make the fire.”

“Luckily there’s pretty much an endless supply of wood all around us,” Dan teases, but then adds, “We could make more coffee for dessert?”

“It might keep me up all night,” Phil warns.

Dan shrugs. “We can play twenty questions or something. I don’t usually sleep very well anymore anyway, do you?”

Phil shakes his head.

“It’s settled then,” Dan says with put on enthusiasm. “I’ll go get the water if you wanna plate the food.”

The water for the coffee heats up while they eat their dinner, which is rather a wordless affair as the both of them are too busy dying a thousand happy little deaths over how amazing it feels to eat a proper hot meal out of proper bowls at a proper table. Dan does a lot more moaning, but Phil’s too busy doing the same to take the piss this time.

“Definitely better than sex,” Phil says at one point and Dan just nods.

Phil piles up their dishes by the door while Dan prepares their dessert, using a little extra condensed milk in the coffees this time to make it feel even more like a treat. Phil sits in the rocking chair by the fireplace and Dan pulls up one of the dining chairs to sit next to him, sipping his molten hot coffee and warming his toes by the flames.

The sun has gone down by now, and despite more caffeine than he’s had in months and months, Dan feels his eyelids growing heavier as he listens to the rhythmic creak of the rocking of Phil’s chair. It reminds him of being small and sitting on his nana’s lap. Thinking back it’s strange to remember that she would have been reading aloud passages from the bible, but back then they were just words to him. Just words softly spoken in his beloved grandmother's voice. He remembers watching her hands and marvelling at how soft and thin the skin was there, wondering why they looked so different from his.

“Can I ask you a question?” he says in a sleepy voice.

“Yeah,” Phil answers without looking at him. He’s staring into the fire looking just as dazed as Dan feels.

“Why do you believe in fate?”

That makes him look. “We don’t have to…”

“It’s ok,” Dan says. “I won’t get upset, I promise.”

Phil looks away again. “I guess because… my mum did. She believed in all that stuff. We’re northerners, it’s just how it is there I guess, innit?”

Dan chuckles breathily. “I wouldn’t know. I grew up near Reading.”

“She was so superstitious.”

“She is,” Dan corrects. “She _is_ superstitious.”

Phil doesn’t smile, and Dan’s afraid it’s him who’s put his foot in it this time, but then he says, “She believes in everything. Astrology, ghosts, soulmates, all of it.”

“Soulmates?”

Phil nods. “I guess it was just easier for me not to question it.”

“Are they religious?” Dan asks.

Phil nods.

“Did you question that?”

Phil smiles wryly at the fire. “I had to, eventually.”

Dan frowns, wondering if he means what he thinks he means. “Why?”

Phil takes so long to answer Dan starts to think he won’t. When he does his voice is quieter and deeper. “I got tired of feeling like there was something wrong with me.”

“Oh.” So he means _exactly_ what Dan thought he meant. Despite the fact that this is some remarkably common ground for them to bond over, Dan is curiously at a loss for words.

“Does that make you uncomfortable?” Phil asks, an edge to his voice the likes of which Dan hasn’t heard yet.

“No,” he says quietly. He can’t seem to make himself say any more than that.

“Anyway,” Phil says. “Fate feels different. It doesn’t hurt anyone for me to believe things happen for a reason. Even bad things.”

“Do you honestly believe that, though?” Dan asks. “Doesn’t that take away people’s autonomy? What’s the point in trying to change anything if it’s all just predetermined?”

Phil shrugs. “I guess I never gave it all that much thought. It’s just comforting. I don’t know if I could keep from having a mental breakdown if I thought this was all just random and meaningless.”

“To me the randomness is what gives it meaning,” Dan says. “Like, ‘you get out what you put in’ kind of thing.”

“It’s not really like, my motto for life or anything. It’s probably just a coping mechanism for when things are really bad. Like now.”

“Now as in, now now?” Dan asks.

Phil smiles. “No. Now as in… basically everything that happened _before_ now now.”

Dan nods and takes a long drink of his coffee. This day has felt about a hundred years long; he’s having a hard time wrapping his head around all the things that have happened in the last twenty four hours. The caffeine is doing absolutely nothing to perk him up, if anything the comfort of it is making him feel more tired.

“Hey Dan?”

“Mm.” He can’t even properly form words anymore apparently.

“I’m really sorry about your mum.”

“We were never close,” Dan admits. “And now we never will be.”

Phil is quiet a moment before he says, “Fate is an asshole.”

Dan nearly chokes on his coffee. “Yeah, it is.”

“I’m really sorry if I stirred up bad memories.”

Dan shakes his head. “The memories are always there. Just sometimes they hurt more than others.”

Phil nods.

“Did you go looking for anyone? After everything?” Dan asks after a long silence, half expecting Phil to cut him off as he’d done earlier in the day. Things feels different now, though. Maybe it’s the coffee or the crackle of the fire or some kind of tentative acceptance of each other starting to form, but he feels like they can say things to each other and it’ll be ok.

Phil nods. “I tried, sort of. Unsurprisingly I didn’t get far.”

“Why unsurprisingly? Do you know where they are?”

“I know where my parents are. Or were. But I can't get there now.”

“Why, where are they?” Dan asks impatiently.

“Isle of Man.”

“Oh. Fuck.”

Phil turns to look at Dan and give him an emotionless, flat lipped smile. “Yup. Unless there’s a boat hidden in this cabin somewhere I’m destined to be alone forever.”

Dan almost says something stupid and cheesy about how he’s not alone, but he stops himself. It can’t do to get attached. It’ll only end in misery and Dan’s had quite enough of that already.

“What about your brother?” Dan asks, hoping to distract Phil from a potential spiral.

“Martyn and Corn lived in London. Who knows, maybe you’ve seen them before. He’s a DJ and she sings. They used to have gigs all the time. I’d go up and see them whenever I could but I was always awkward at stuff like that. I don’t do well in crowds and I don’t know how to dance and…”

“What?” Dan asks, when he realizes Phil isn’t going to keep going. “And what?”

“Sorry, I was rambling about boring crap.”

Dan shrugs. “I wasn’t bored. Were they any good?”

“She has an amazing voice. It’s like, proper good. She’s from Sweden. She’s like five years older than him and has curly red hair and she’s really nice. Basically way too good for my brother.”

Dan smiles.

“That’s not what you asked though,” Phil says shaking his head. He tips his mug back and necks some coffee. “Martyn’s music was well weird. I didn’t really get it, but he was always way cooler than me.”

“My brother liked to think he was cooler than me,” Dan says. “I never let him get away with it though.”

“What’s his name?” Phil asks.

“Adrian.”

Phil clicks his tongue. “I dunno, sounds like a cool name to me.”

“Did I not tell you he ran marathons for _fun_?”

“Some people are really into that.”

“He was vegan before I was,” Dan says.

Phil puts on a face like he isn’t impressed. “You’re not convincing me here, mate. Veganism is very trendy right now, even if it is bloody insane.”

Dan folds his arms. His heart is pounding as he says what he says next. “He’s straight. That’s gotta lose him a few points.”

It’s deeply satisfying how surprised Phil looks, and how unsophisticated his response is. “You’re not straight?”

“Nope. Admit I’m cooler than Adrian.”

“Does that mean I’m cooler than Martyn?” Phil asks.

Dan nods.

Phil holds out his hand. “Ok, deal. We’re both officially the cool brothers.”

Dan takes Phil’s hand and shakes it, then lets it drop. The buzz of coming out to someone new has faded as quickly as it appeared. It just doesn’t mean what it used to mean. It’s basically a moot point, anyway.

He’s not thinking about anything as trivial as sexuality anymore. Right now he’s thinking about Adrian. He’s thinking about how they didn’t even get along until just a few years ago. He’s thinking about all the years he wasted and feeling the kind of regret that claws at his chest.

“I miss him,” Dan says quietly. “Even if he was kind of a prat sometimes.”

“I know,” Phil says quietly. “I miss Martyn every freaking day. I miss everyone.”

Dan looks up when he feels Phil’s hand on his shoulder, big and gentle. He squeezes a little and holds Dan’s gaze until Dan’s throat is tight and dry and he has to look away.

Phil drops his hand. “I can’t believe I’m saying this literally as I dump coffee down my throat but I think I’m tired.”

As if on cue, Dan stretches his arms above his head and yawns rather loudly. He’s glad for the change in subject. “You should go to sleep.”

Phil nods. “My head hurts.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Dan says, less harshly than his words would imply. “Go. Before your brain starts leaking out your ears.”

“Go?”

“Yes?”

“Go where?” Phil asks.

Dan frowns. “Has the leaking already started?”

“You’re not telling me to take the bed.”

“Uhh, yes, I am. Obviously.”

“I can’t. You’ve been taking care of me all day. You saved my bloody life, you actually think I’m gonna let you, what, sleep on the floor?”

Dan shrugs. “I’ll sleep on the rocking chair. Still an improvement from the ground.”

Phil shakes his head. “Hell no.”

“Phil, shut the fuck up. Just go. You have a fucking concussion.”

“You don’t actually _know_ that,” Phil argues.

“I _know_ that you’re sleeping on the bed.”

“Let’s rock paper scissors for it.”

“Let’s not.”

Phil crosses his arms defiantly. “How have you gone from suspecting that I’m going to chop you up in your sleep to insisting I take the nice comfy bed? You make no sense.”

“It’s not that comfy,” Dan quips.

“Your mum’s not that comfy.”

Phil slaps his hand over his mouth the moment the words have left it. “Shit,” he mumbles against his fingers. “I’m so stupid.”

“Now you owe me,” Dan says with a smirk. “It’s the insensitive asshole tax.”

Phil drops his hands from his face, but he still appears to be pained. “I think the guilt might actually kill me.”

Dan rolls his eyes. “I forgive you, ok? Just get in the fucking bed.”

Phil doesn’t say anything. He looks over at the bed and then at Dan and then back over to the bed again.

“Phil, just—”

“We could share,” Phil blurts.

“What?”

“There’s no reason for one person to get the shaft when there’s enough room for both of us.”

Dan snorts. “Don’t say ‘get the shaft.”

Phil glares at him.

“Ok, I’m sorry,” Dan says, trying not to smirk quite so gleefully. “But that bed is fucking tiny as it is and were both big dudes.”

“I’m not saying it’s ideal. I’m trying to compromise.” Phil’s voice has gone small and quiet.

Suddenly it’s clear to Dan that Phil is genuinely embarrassed. The reaction in Dan’s gut tells him that it won’t do to know he made Phil feel bad when all he was trying to do was be kind. He may be a stranger but apparently Dan’s body is committed to taking care of him even when his better judgement still isn’t fully on board.

Dan stands up before Phil can feel any worse. “Alright then,” he says. “Let’s go.”

Phil looks up. “Yeah?”

Dan nods. “Might as well try, at least. I’m just gonna brush my teeth first.”

Phil’s eyes go wide. “You have a toothbrush?”

Dan nods. “How do you not? You practically have a whole pharmacy in your bag.”

“I’m so stupid,” Phil mutters. “I never thought about a toothbrush.”

“I have toothpaste. You could put some on a cloth and just… rub it on your teeth? Better than nothing, right?”

“You’d share your toothpaste with me?”

Dan rolls his eyes and goes to grab a cloth from the wardrobe. “Come on you spoon.”

Dan tries not to be too awkward about climbing into bed behind Phil once their teeth are clean. He brings his own blanket so they can at least cocoon themselves separately and keep some illusion of personal space between them, but the reality is that this bed was small enough when Dan was sleeping in it alone.

“Is this too weird?” Phil asks. Dan can tell he’s trying to press himself against the wall as much as possible.

“It’s weird, but what isn’t weird anymore?” Dan asks. “I found you bleeding at the bottom of the stairs in a cabin in the middle of the woods this morning.”

“Right.” He doesn’t sound reassured.

“I trust that you’re not going to kill me in my sleep,” Dan says quietly. “Do you?”

Phil chuckles. “Do I trust that I’m not going to kill you in your sleep?”

Dan wriggles his arm free of his blanket burrito so he can shove Phil in the shoulder. “Fuck off.”

Phil smiles, his face lit up dimly by the warm yellow glow of the fire. “I trust you not to kill me. If you’d wanted me dead you could’ve just left me at the bottom of those stairs.”

“True.” He rolls over onto his side and so does Phil, so that they’re facing away from each other and their backs are pressed rather tightly together. He can’t pretend it doesn’t feel comforting, in a base, primal sort of way. There’s something about not being alone that just makes him feel safer, even if it isn’t really rational.

He reckons it’s true what they say; no man is an island. Humans aren’t meant to be on their own, and he’s been on his own for a very long time.

They both fall quiet for long enough that Dan assumes Phil has fallen asleep. His own eyes are closed and he can feel himself sinking slowly into the heavy place between waking and dreaming.

And then he hears Phil speaking again.

“Doesn’t it feel like it’s been more than a day?” His voice has gone gravelly and deep.

“Yeah.”

“I kind of feel like we’ve known each other forever.”

Dan is glad he can’t see Phil’s face, and he’s glad Phil can’t see his. He’s caught off guard by the truth of Phil’s words. It seems almost unfathomable that they’ve known each other less than twenty four hours.

He doesn’t know what to do with this feeling. It’s the kind of feeling that’ll get him in trouble later, but he’s tired down to his bones and he’s losing the will to keep fighting it.

“Yeah,” Dan murmurs.

“I know it pisses you off, and I’m really sorry about it, but… I feel like I was supposed to meet you. I wish it didn’t have to be like this, but… I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like a coincidence.”

He’ll deny it in the morning, blame it on the whirlwind of the day and the resulting fatigue, but right now, just for right now Dan can admit that Phil is right. This doesn’t feel random. Nothing about any of this feels random.

“Dan. Do you think it’s a coincidence?”

“I don’t know,” Dan says quietly. “Maybe it isn’t.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much to amy for all the much needed cheerleading <3


End file.
